The number of abortions in Texas dropped 13 percent in the last year as new abortion restrictions triggered the closure of nearly half the state’s abortion clinics, according to a new study by Texas researchers and national reproductive health experts.

The Texas Policy Evaluation Project, a group opposed to the abortion law passed last summer by the Texas Legislature, concluded that about 9,200 fewer abortions occurred in the last year primarily because of House Bill 2, which placed new restrictions on medical or pill-induced abortions, required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and banned most procedures after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Those provisions of the law went into effect in November.

The findings, to be published in the journal Contraception, provide the first glimpse of the broad effect of the law. Abortion rights advocates say the numbers show that women have diminished access to abortion, particularly in rural areas where clinics have closed. For proponents of the law, reducing the number of abortions in the state was the intended consequence.

The study found the number of abortion clinics in Texas dropped from 41 in April 2013 to 21 today. That leaves entire regions of the state without clinics, with some 290,000 women of reproductive age living more than 200 miles from a clinic — up from just 10,000 women before the law took effect.

As a result, more women are getting abortions in larger cities such as Austin or Houston, the study said.

“It’s certainly more burdensome, and there’s costs associated with that,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, the lead author of the study and vice president of Ibis Reproductive Health in Oakland, Calif. “People need time off from work, child care. For women who have resources, they will be able to do that; but for women who don’t, it’s going to be much more difficult.”

Of note is the closure of the only two abortion clinics in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest regions in the state. There, women were traveling more than 100 miles to Corpus Christi. Once that clinic closed, a facility about 200 miles away in San Antonio became the nearest option.

Also, Texas saw a 70 percent drop in the less invasive and more affordable medical abortion, or abortion pill, Grossman said. Nationally, use of the abortion pill is increasing.

“Some women really prefer to have a medical abortion,” he said. “They see it as something more private; they don’t want to have an invasive surgical procedure. Given the new restrictions in Texas, fewer women are eligible for that, and fewer clinics are offering medical abortions.”

Joe Pojman, director of the Texas Alliance for Life, an anti-abortion group that supported House Bill 2, said the law makes abortion procedures safer for women and that some of the decline in abortions could be attributed to the law’s requirement that women spend more time with their doctors before an abortion.

“We think many women who are going through the decision-making process for abortion decide that abortion is not the best option for them,” Pojman said. “That causes part of the decrease of abortion in the state of Texas.”

Pojman said a decline in the abortion rate is a major objective for his group, though he took issue with the study’s methodology, which included a look at three six-month periods surrounding the heated debate in Austin last year over abortion legislation — the months before, during and after. Researchers also relied heavily on numbers reported by abortion providers and looked at a smaller time frame than state researchers do when they compile vital statistics.

“I’ll just say we approach that with caution because those numbers were provided by interviews with abortion providers, which gives us a low degree of confidence,” Pojman said.

But the study’s findings echo the express intentions of the legislators who passed the law, says Heather Busby, executive director of the Texas branch of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. The problem, she argues, is while the law is decreasing the number of abortions, it does not decrease the need or demand for them.

“This is all pretty much what was predicted and expected,” Busby said. “That doesn’t mean abortions aren’t happening. They’re just going out of state.”

“The regulations are onerous and unnecessary,” she added. “They do not improve safety.”

By September, a final provision of the law goes into effect: all abortion facilities must meet the same requirements as hospital-style surgical centers. Anti-abortion advocates say the measure will increase safety for women, but opponents say it will further hinder abortion rights of women who will find yet fewer options.

Either way, researchers predict that new requirement will result in more than 750,000 Texas women of reproductive age living farther than 200 miles from an abortion clinic.

That diminished access to abortions, combined with 2011 cuts to family planning spending, is likely to lead to more unintended births, critics of the law said.

Currently, there are only six abortion clinics that meet those more stringent requirements, all located in the state’s largest cities.

BY THE NUMBERS

13 percent decline in the abortion rate in Texas in the last year

46 percent of Texas abortion clinics closed from April 2013 to April 2014

290,000 Texas women of reproductive age live more than 200 miles from an abortion clinic

752,000 women of reproductive age are expected to live more than 200 miles from an abortion clinic when new requirements take effect in September.